Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @03:33PM
from the good-for-sitting-on-the-bandwagon dept.

yukk writes "The Age is reporting that Levi Strauss is now making custom bluejeans with a built-in joystick and retractable headphones for all the iPod lovers of the world." From the article: "The Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans for men and women, which will be available this northern autumn, also have a built-in docking cradle for the iPod and retractable headphones. Its price was not yet available."

So now when your headphones snap, you've got a pair of jeans that are pointless. Or if your jeans rip, you've got an unusable dock. It wouldn't matter if these wern't going to cost so much, but who wants to waste this much for some bad convergance?

I wonder what the care instructions are like. Do you suppose the electronics are really built to withstand the soapy water, tossing about, and spin cycle of a washing machine? How about the heat of a dryer?
-JMP

Not to mention all that extra expense and you're limited to only using it with that one pair of Levi's. (Or those pairs of Levi's if you're a Levi fanboy)

Don't think I'll buy a single pair. Now, if they made some pants with the watch pocket redesigned a bit to accommodate the Nano (like deeper) so it doesn't hit my pelvic bone when I sit down I'd buy those.

That was my initial thought. That they were just going to be releasing a pair of jeans with a pocket designed to fit a relatively standard sized iPod (hopefully big enough to accomodate my non-docking slightly larger than normal 20 Gig 2nd generation model, not just the newest). Sure it would probably be about as stupid and useless as those cell phone pockets that I've been seeing lately, but a specific pocket would prevent it from flopping around the way it does when I carry it in one of my cargo pockets a

I don't see it working for any iPod pre-dock-connector. They said it'd have remote control functionality built-in, and the only option for such control on recent iPods is the dock connector.

People willing to spend much on a fancy pair of jeans aren't going to be using an iPod from three years ago. In addition, there is a relatively miniscule installed base of older iPods. They didn't really take off until at least the third or fourth generation.

I assure you that when I got mine in the 2nd Generation (ah the old days, back when you had seperate PC and Mac versions) they were pretty well into taking off. Admittedly they weren't as near-ubiquitous as they've become, but they were pretty hard to miss.I always wondered why remotes went over to using the dock. On the older models the remote plugged directly into the headphone port with the headphones plugging into the remote. Frankly this was very useful since it could also be used as an extension cord

I suppose we were looking at different points in the curve;)It's been pretty asymptotic so far, and the past holiday season about a quarter of the total sold were put into customer hands. Extrapolate from that, and perhaps 5-10% of the sold iPods were before the third generation - and many of those who purchased the first few versions of iPods have since upgraded.

Apple Computer sold 14 million of its market-leading digital media players in the 2005 holiday sales quarter -- up from 4.5 million in the 2004

While I have to agree that $200 for a pair of jeans is ridiculous, I have to point out that there are many other jeans that sell in this price range. Ever walked through a Nordstroms? Some people care more about fashion than anything else, and I applaud Levi's for taking these fools' money.

"I realized that all my pants were already iPod-compatible," he said in a statement late Wednesday. "This is obviously a case of infringement by a corporation who thinks they can step all over people".

Clam will be represented by the ACBU (American Civil Bullshit Union). Levi refused comment at this time.

FTFA... "The Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans for men and women, which will be available this northern autumn..."Sorry I'm not cultured enough to know what 'northern autumn' is, but the article makes it sound like not quite yet.

My old, outdated, no longer available for sale (sadly - I prefer it to the Nano) iPod Mini fits in the coin pocket of my current jeans really nicely. What's the point of having headphones and a dock in there, other than to have a nightmare washing them?